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Army Ants March into New Exhibition

The seven four-foot ants marching toward the Biology/Physics Building invite visitors to follow them inside to view an exhibit on the complex society of army ants and their guests. (Sean Flynn/UConn Photo)

The seven four-foot ants crawling along the entrance to the Biology/Physics Building on North Eagleville Road are not a cause for alarm; instead, they invite visitors to follow them inside to view “Be Our Guest: An Exhibit on the Complex Society of Army Ants and Their Guests.”

The exhibit is the first public introduction to the Carl and Marian Rettenmeyer Army Ant Guest Collection, which is considered one of the premier collections of its kind in the world. It consists of more than two million specimens, field notes, and other material from research conducted by the late Carl Rettenmeyer, a faculty member in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 1971 to 1996, and his wife Marian. The exhibit opens to the public on Sunday, April 30 from 1 to 5 p.m., and continues Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Rettenmeyers worked in Central and South America for 50 years studying the intricacies of the complex societies of army ants that are constantly foraging and moving along the ground, consuming up to 500,000 prey animals each day, such as earthworms, other insects, and larvae. Army ant societies are complemented by numerous “guests,” the many creatures, including mites, beetles, flies, wasps, springtails, and bristletails, that are intimately associated with the ants and benefit from their active daily life.

The exhibit is one of the initial results of a partnership between the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History – which Carl Rettenmeyer founded – to curate, digitize, and catalogue the Rettenmeyer collection and its associated materials under a three-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In addition to hundreds of thousands of specimens of about 114 species of army ants, the collection includes 92,000 specimens of guests representing 187 species. The grant will also fund the development of an online database to provide researchers and the public with access to the various elements of the collection.

“This exhibit helps to fulfill one of the primary goals of the NSF grant, which is to make the Rettenmeyer collection available to the broader scientific community and to the general public,” says Janine Caira, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “The Rettenmeyers’ work teaches us that one needs to look carefully and closely if the wonders of the natural world are to be fully revealed. Their approach showed that what initially appeared to be a simple system was, in fact, fantastically complex. The challenge in developing an exhibit to share the wonders of their work and this system with visitors was one of scale. The majority of the guests are microscopic and many have evolved over time to resemble their ant hosts. Since we couldn’t scale visitors [to the exhibit] down, our solution was to scale the army ants and their guests up!”

The entrance to the Biology/Physics Building, where a new exhibit focused on army ants and their ‘guests’ will open this weekend. (Ken Best/UConn Photo)

Throughout the exhibit, visitors are encouraged to discover guests portrayed in a variety of ways. A 12-foot-tall model of an army ant soldier that welcomes visitors includes eight different cryptic mites attached to various parts of its body. Floor lighting of silhouettes of army ants and some of the guests that run with them in their emigration columns illustrate the remarkable resemblance between the ants and their beetle guests. Hundreds of photographs taken with light and scanning electron microscopes reveal the marvelous diversity and intimate associations of army ant guests. Visitors are invited to apply their new-found knowledge of this system to locate guests in a series of photographs of army ants in nature.

The lower portion of the display focuses on the highly diverse guests. Some have intimate associations with an individual ant, while others live among the throng of the colony. Army ants and their guests represent an astoundingly complex biological system. Together, these hundreds of species have coevolved over millennia to harness the rich resources of tropical rainforests.

The exhibit is a collaborative effort between NSF project personnel from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Caira, Jane O’Donnell, Geert Goemans, and Bernard Goffinet. Elizabeth Barbeau provided content for the exhibit, and Collin Harty, exhibit developer for the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, designed and created the exhibit. The giant army ant with guests was created by Michael Anderson, chief exhibit preparatory at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and a noted sculptor. Michael Chybowski, associate professor of lighting design in the Department of Dramatic Arts, assisted with the strategy for displaying floor images.

For the opening of the exhibit, special programs will include a talk by UConn alumnus Rob Dunn ’03 Ph.D., professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, on his new book, Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and our Future (Little Brown, 2017). There also will be a variety of activities including microscopes with real guest specimens, a tour of the Rettenmeyer Collection, a live fungus-growing ant colony, and special Dairy Bar AntU ice cream.

“Be Our Guest: An exhibit on the Complex Society of Army Ants and Their Guests” continues Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Biology/Physics Building 91 N. Eagleville Road, Storrs, through 2019. For more information go tobiodiversity.uconn.edu/ant-guests/. Parking is available in Lot 9 adjacent to the Lodewick Visitors Center and in the North Parking Garage, located at 103 North Eagleville Road. The lot and the garage are a short walking distance to the Biology/Physics Building.

Note: Beginning May 8, North Eagleville Road will undergo a major construction project, and will be a one-way street running west to east from Discovery Drive to Route 195 (Storrs Road) until late August.

Join us for a talk by Gina Barreca,2018 UCONN BOARD OF TRUSTEESDISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH

All great works of fiction, poetry and dramaâas well as texts forming mythologies, religions, national epics to heroic sagasâhave loneliness at the heart of their narrative. From Persephone to Peter Pan, from âFrankensteinâ to âFrozen,â the stories we pass along are saturated with unwilling isolation.âOnly around half of Americans say they have meaningful, daily face-to-face social interactions,â according to a 2017 study. A former U.S. Surgeon General argues that âWe live in the most technologically connected age in the history of civilization, yet rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980s.â We need more than social media. We need social contact. We need community. How can we break through the loneliness barrier? Being alone when in need of companionship is more than sad; itâs an epidemic.Chronic loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. We need to change our national story and, often, our personal ones as well.Even the concept of the âlone wolfâ is a myth. Wolves hunt in packs.

Reception to follow.

For more information about this event, or if you are an individual who requires special accommodation to participate, please contact the CLAS Deanâs Office at (860) 486-2713.

A liberal arts and sciences degree prepares students with the tools they need to excel across a wide range of careers. Given the number of options available to you, it can be overwhelming to narrow down career choices. Attending CLAS Career Night will provide you exposure to career opportunities for CLAS students.

This semesterâs focus will be on research-based careers. During this event you will engage with CLAS alumni, learn about various occupations, and gain insight about how to best prepare for your future career.

The McNair Scholars Program and the Office of Undergraduate Research invite you to join us for a brown bag research seminar.

Birds, Bacteria, and Bioinformatics: Why Evolutionary Biology is the Best

Sarah Hird, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Molecular and Cell Biology

This series is open to all undergraduate and graduate students, and is designed especially for students conducting (or interested in conducting) STEM research. These seminars are opportunities to learn about research being pursued around campus, to talk with faculty about their path into research, and to ask questions about getting involved in research.

About CLAS

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is the academic core of learning and research at UConn. We are committed to the full spectrum of academics across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. We give students a liberal arts and sciences education that empowers them with broad knowledge, transferable skills, and an ability to think critically about important issues across a variety of disciplines.